I share this from Sky News:
And you wonder why I am worried?
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Design by Andy Moyle
Jesus the whole world is worried..about their health, health of friends and family, what’s happening to the economy everything..please don’t sit there with a holier than you attitude, what needs to be done etc.. with respect we are facing a crisis and with respect you know fuck all about the medical situation. We can all sit there in our armchairs and pontificate about this and that..let’s be honest you see this crisis as an opportunity in the mayhem to try and instigate some ideological upheaval with fits with your agenda.. and for that you should be deeply ashamed
With respect, I’m doing rather more than pontificating
But you seem to be doing just that
Rare to see the F word in this space…we’re used to more thoughtful comments. Sorry you have to deal with such idiots Richard. Keep up your good work.
Take care of yourself and get well soon.
I feel pretty OK this morning – as if I can get back to more normal routimes, at last
Thanks
Thanks Richard…
https://youtu.be/I6ezAcFybJE
Hey Jayne – do you think Richard is the only one who is ‘using’ the crisis as an opportunity to make change?
What you should be worried about is those proposing change that you will not hear about – between cabinet ministers of this shitty Government for example, discussions between corporation board members and other company owners using the crisis to their benefit. As well as those hoping to make a killing as we come out of it.
And what about the financial sector – people who have just had massive payouts from credit default swaps meant to make them money out of company’s performance diving after BREXIT that have instead made money because of Covid-19. Do you fancy writing to Crispin Odey for example and telling him how disgusted you are with his agenda by any chance?
Please copy us in if you do.
As of this weekend i’ve noted a significant spreading of the troll epidemic.
It’s as if they have had their playbooks updated and are deployed and airborne to rain their bombs on the Indy sites where comment is still allowed.
Most msm comments are locked down or not open.
The trolling has extended to downright lies and abuse and cussing – expecting a harsh reaction- which will no doubt be used to shut down or proscribe such sites. A shadowy organisation is already gathering a list of ‘fake news’ sites.
Jane Doe or whoever they are are paid and also following orders.
We went from a nation that had enshrined legal rights to one that has handed over all our liberties to the state in less than a week of legislation.
Game over – the government will declare the crises over and battle won within a week and sir bozo will rise as the great saviour as corona- ted by the msm and the dumb public will believe the whole dumb narrative.
‘ Whatever it takes ‘ Our government can it says it is sending a letter to every household – some 30 million . Well let them enclose a cheque for £2000 ( £60 billion in total ) to the person to whom the letter is addressed .
This is the text of the email I sent yesterday to my MP Bim Afolami ( Conservative : Hitchin and Harpenden ) .
Bim,
The government says today that it is sending out letters to 30 million households . With every one of those letters it should enclose a cheque for £2000 ( £60 billion ) made out to the person to whom the letter is addressed. Nothing could be easier . It doesn’t matter if some of the cheques don’t get cashed, or some go to rich people . The crisis is unprecedented in our lifetimes. You are young. Go and kick the door in while you can. There may not be a door to kick next week. So says your government not me.
Regards,
John Hope
And this morning I received the following reply
Dear John,
I agree. I have made the point to them, and will continue to do so.
Kind regards,
Bim Afolami
MP for Hitchin and Harpenden
And he is a Tory
Well, that is southern Italy, can you see the English rioting or organising supermarket raids? If we get hungry enough it may happen but we already have a sub-culture of people living from hand to mouth – literally and they have not risen in revolt. I wish they would!
At the moment, the opinion polls show great support for Johnson (and please nobody refer to him as BoJo or Boris, he is not your mate!), despite a litany of failure and bare faced lies on live TV no less.
We have emergency powers allowing the police to stop and arrest people (as happened here in Christchurch) for not staying at home.
Another point about this is the spread of COVID-19 when/if a revolt happens. Then we are in real trouble.
The ability of the media to propagate misinformation/spin and also sins of omission has led us to this point. If we are to have any hope of taking the government to task over their failures the media must be fixed first.
Don’t ask me how to do that, I have no idea!
When people are hungry and cannot ay for food because no support has arrived I rule nothing out
I think it wise to consider such possibilities
Illuminating, to say the least, as this wasn’t the impression I’d been getting from coverage of Italy. That was shops with enough food, strong social links being reinforced, and a nation that is staunchly resisting a crisis.
Now it looks like the first 5 minutes of Pulp Fiction: “Anyone moves an inch and I’ll kill every f***ing one of you!”.
Two thoughts
I did not file the report, and I did wonder how representative it was
But, second, tipping points happen, usually when people run out of necessities, like food
I was speaking with a friend in Italy about this earlier. She says (and this is anecdote, no more) that what is in the video is still far from the norm – but that tempers in the country are now getting frayed. We are passing the point of a balcony sing-along getting everyone through. How far we in the rest of Europe are from that scenario is anyone’s guess but certainly it is rather more than theoretical. My first UK concern is the possibility of an age split i.e. old supporting a long lockdown with the young being less keen.
I guess that something as draconian as lockdowns with no clear exit strategy necessarily ran the risk of disorder. The lockdowns were of course necessary but, without wanting to state the obvious, societies can’t do this for any length of time. More people will have mental breakdowns than will die of the virus.
I understand gun sales have sharply risen in the US.
Italy’s relationship with the EU is a complicating factor. But I don’t think that’s relevant in a discussion about the scope for disorder.
The problem is easier to state than the solution. Best guess on my part is a fast and responsive support system, food rationing and a weekly update on the exit strategy are all needed to avoid disorder. We’re miles away from any of that.
Around Europe there are elections generally due in the early to mid 2020s. What happens there is anyone’s guess.
I doubt it is representative, yet
The report did not say that
It speculated on a possible breakdown
I think that possible anywhere when many people can not access food
The response of the EU to Italy and Spain has been poor..this could be the beginning of the end for the EU.
The EU always was, and remains, in its essence a Peace Project. That is in its political DNA. For all its flaws, it remains so; and it is essential for Europe that, ‘warts and all’, it survives.
The worst of Brexit was in its very essence; the eagerness to disparage the EU not just for the British, but to rally all Europeans to the demand others follow where Brexit led; the desire not just to leave the EU, but to destroy it; the unstated proposition that lay hidden within Brexit is that without the EU, the wholesale Balkanisation of Europe will return, allowing the return also of exploitative ‘balance of power’ politics in which offshore-Britain could return to the ‘good ole times’; playing one European side off against another; forming fragile, in-and-out, alliances always that will propel Britain to a kind of offshore, free-as-air supremacy that only Britain can enjoy in Europe; without the responsibility for the consequences. The EU was developed after two world as a final demonstration of the bankruptcy of the concept; but it seems like some irrersponsible, undischarged bankrupt, we are not resigned but eager in Britain to return to show everyone else how brilliant we always were: determined to live out this Brexit-induced perdition we are now only too determined in Britain to relive all over again.
But not by me, and I trust that if we are condemned to this, Scotland will finally call ‘time’ on this Union.
‘The EU was developed after two world wars as a final demonstration of the bankruptcy of the concept’ (of ‘balance of power’ politics).
Correction of blooper; missing the word ”wars”. Apologies
I doubt it will end the EU. But what I hope emerges is a different EU. By far the better criticism of the EU was that it is neither fish nor fowl. The limits of the EU we have have been shown in grisly detail in the past weeks. The lack of convergence has resulted in balance of power politics – just in a different way.
Many of the principles underlying the EU are now gone for a good few years.
This needs to be either a trading bloc or a political bloc. With voters fully informed and no more casual ‘spillover effect.’ The four freedoms are, and always were, very much divisible.
Were the EU to collapse it would be a disaster. But the EU can’t just think that it can go on in its current form. At a minimum the single currency needs a top to bottom rethink.
Duncan (if I may?),
What is the point of these observations? We aren’t there. We walked away. We have no input any more. In a real sense, we never were there. We were a recalcitrant, difficult, awkward member, whinging and undermining the EU at every turn; as if from the outside. We could have done so much to help the EU develop, and we didn’t do it. We complained instead, we were completely negative members. These things leave their marl on the institution. Speaking only for myself, this is not a history which gives me much pride.
We were among the loudest voices for rapid expansion of the EU when the Berlin Wall fell, but I suspect in the cynical hope it would de-stabilise its purpose of ‘ever closer union’. It is striking how rapidly we fled when the going was tough, in part a consequence of that rapid expansion of members, and the real pressure on the outer borders of the EU which began when a pan-European crisis in the form of a refugee flood, struck home. That is Europe’s history. It goes with the territory.
There is so much Britain might have done, could have done, should have done as a leading EU member; but it didn’t. That would have needed genuine participation, and we do not believe in it. We never did. But we do not escape some culpability for leaving the EU in the predicament in which it now finds itself; that largely developed when we were a major participant (however reluctant).
And of course Italy has twice as many Police per head as the UK.
The UK scenario is the UK riots of 2011 when Cameron remained on holiday and literally control was abrogated – particularly as many police were – in many ways to all of our credit – not riot trained.
Regret I think that would be the likely UK scenario again
Policing by consent conflicts with government which is not by truly democratic consent but now by senseless and mindless diktat.
Yet our government, in not believing in government, gives us the worst of all possible worlds. They decree control but fail to back it up – so we have to sweep up the debris, gather together in supportive groups and carry on regardless of government. Yet, crucially without money.
A complete indictment of our democracy.
If, though on present government performance. it is probably when, it comes about, I suggest our disorder will be anarchic and so disorganised as to be even more difficult to control….
Who will not try to steal from Tesco et al – and that, I fear is where the disorder would first occur – when they have literally no food for their families?
Thus it is in many ways, worse than Southern Italy…
looking on the bright side – …………….at least the fatberg now has: an anti-fake news unit in Downing street.
petard, hoist. own.
which illustrates that all that went before was something of a larf for the fatberg – playing in political sandpit with the other political kids – nothing serious – all one big joke/pack of lies – on the punters, ooops I meant British serfs.
As others have remarked, be interesting to see what happens in the “poor north” or indeed in poor rural areas as they run out of money. Power/political vacuums are always filled.
I appreciate this is a blog post and perhaps just thrown out as one idea among many, but if the idea is that we are going to go the same way as Italy (and it seems it is) then it really needs more argument than this.
I have family in Italy. They lived through the Days of Lead in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The older ones just about remember the civil war and its aftermath. There are also significant regional differences within Italy, and strong local identities and resentment of the centre. These pictures are from the south, which is poorer, and has had a continuing problem with organised crime.
It’s worth adding too that it seems unlikely that the crisis the people in these clips are facing is going to be significantly replicated here. It looks to me that Johnson has well and truly f*cked up on public health side, but as regards the economy he’s probably done rather well. The measures he’s bringing in are extensive and unprecedented – yes I agree with you the early measures really didn’t work – but he’s moved a long way. He’s been really very bold. He’s entirely junked everything the Tories have believed in for the last 10 years (actually 40+). This to the extent that it is difficult to see a Corbyn led government having gone further (and impossible for me to imagine any other Labour government having gone nearly as far). Timidity is their core belief.
So unless there are real shortages, I don’t see anything like those scenes in Italy coming our way.
The shortages are of money, not food
And money shortages are going to be very real, very soon
Stop the politics right now
Let’s just deal with on the ground reality – where this government is going to be failing millions who will not be able to pay for food very soon
There’s a further concern that might very quickly create problems for the food supply chain in the UK. I believe something like 53% of food comes through ports like Dover and is reliant on the French keeping the border with the UK open. We live in France and are hearing reports that concern is growing, both here and in Spain, that there will be serious shortages of labour from North Africa to bring in the crops. It’s very likely that if this scenario becomes a reality France and Spain will look to their own countries first.
Aside from my side swipe at the Labour right, I didn’t think I was doing politics. But I think you are. Actually politics needs doing, but I was aiming at a realistic understanding of where we are. No point fooling ourselves for politics’ sake. Politics needs to be soundly based.
You say the shortages are of money not food. Well yes, money will be shorter for some, indeed for most, but on the whole not that short. I myself am being furloughed. It will mean quite a drop in my income. Because I earn more than the cap, I won’t get 80% that those on lower incomes will. But I’ll be okay, and I think if we are being realistic most people will be. If you’re not having to pay to travel to work, not going to pubs and restaurants, not going on holiday, buying fewer clothes and more or less stop driving and so on, I don’t see people rioting and looting because they can’t get by on 80%.
If you think they will, why do you think this?
I think you may be trying to talk things up for political reasons. But we need to be realistic.
Around 40% of UK households run out of money each month
They have no savings
They will not have any this month-end
Maybe the last week will have bought seven days breathing space
And then the money runs out
As food charities are reporting – they think millions face hunger for this reason
You mauy be OK. Good. Millions won’t. Think a little more broadly I suggest
I’m afraid I’m not convinced. Also rather doubtful if calling for further resources generally would get much political traction at this stage, though the self employed and gig economy may be an exception to this. I wouldn’t rule it out, if you can make an economic argument for it, but I get the general sense that most people think, with the possible exception on the self employed, that the government has gone a long long way, and I agree with them. It has.
There’s really no need to make comments implying that somehow I’m being narrow minded.
All this aside however I’d suggest the more interesting question is what all this help both for businesses and individuals means for politics. It seems to me potentially to make all sorts of things that were previously regarded as impossible, no longer impossible at all. It substantially shifts the Overton window, and there really nothing that the PM and the Tories can do about this. They have been forced to embrace it. And it seems to put MMT centre stage. Suddenly all sides of the political spectrum have to buy into MMT.
I was saying you really need to think about those with no mnoney
I agree with your last comment
But those month 12% of all people in Ireland have lost their jobs – a figure that will rise
Here that would be (ignoring the wels employed) nearly 3 million people
We may see that rise rapidly
And millions more will be waiting for bailout funds here
40% of households have almost no savings
How won’t money run out?
Here we have the problem of fashionable vocabulary leading the thought process. Thus: “It substantially shifts the Overton window ….”.
I think what we require is slightly more fundamental and robust than a ‘shift’; this requires the de-fenestration of the fabric of neo-liberalism. When we have the time, beyond COVID-19 (someday, but I hope not over the rainbow), a transparent glass curtain wall exposing the workings of the economy to rigorous public scrutiny for fairness and equity; including the benefits and costs to ordinary people of the current functioning of the banks, hedge-funds, and tax havens will do; as a casual, off-the-cuff start.